Every
outing is kind of an adventure here. It’s time for us to escape our “island”
for a while and discover a more “bestial” part of Africa. As there aren’t many
safari animals in The Gambia, other that hippopotami, we travelled to Fathala
in Senegal, a half hour from Barra, for our first “expedition”.
From Banjul, you must
take the ferry to Barra by foot because it would be very hard to cross with
your car due to the few crossings and the incredible number of vehicles waiting
to cross in the neighbouring roads.
The crowd gets on (top-left) or gets off (bottom-right) at the same time as the cars
– not an easy task. During the trip, people are everywhere: on the bridge, in,
on, in front, behind, or next to vehicles without any regard for security (bottom-left). Two weeks ago, in arrival
to Banjul, a boat violently rammed the port and a person had died, crushed
between two cars. The next day, as if nothing had happened, people were back to
the old habits. For us, it’s hard to understand, but that’s how they roll!
The ferries are full to the
point of saturation, are old, have holes, and advance… as well as they can. The
crossing can only take half an hour in calm conditions, which is what happened
for us… lucky devils, and can take over 3 hours… you’ll have to be patient if
that’s the case. We had just left the port when we were accosted from all sides
by vendors selling souvenirs or goods to buy (sweets, pencils, workbooks…) to "distribute in the villages" – or so they say.
At the dawn, no sun, but an orange sky
brought about by a sandstorm from the Sahara. In this case, everything – including
us – is covered by a thin orange dust and the luminosity takes a hit (middle-top and -bottom). It apparently never
lasts more than two days and probably allowed us not to bake under the sun in
our open-top “safari” vehicle! Pascal tried to cover his mouth as our teeth
started crunching with sand dust.
Lamin “bird”, who accompanied us, booked the chauffeur and his old, nay,
very old Land Rover Santana that seemed to be on its final legs. No working metres
or petrol gauge, a petrol tank comprising of a 5 litre jerry can under the
front passenger seat (middle) that
forces the user to have another jerry can to fill it up en route. Luckily,
there weren’t any predators in the reserve because between the two “breakdowns”
that halted us for a few minutes each and the jerry can “siphoning” to fill the
reservoir, we could easily have finished in the belly of a lion!!!
In
the three long seats that were on offer, we quickly had the backrest of the
first row that fell right onto our feet (top-right),
then it was the turn of our backrest to
let go. It must be said that holding them with only one screw is very borderline!
The
entry and visit fee is 25,000 CFA which was £30 + D150. Why £’s? Well I have no
idea. Lamin said that it would be £30. I thought that it would have been better
to take CFAs from the get-go but why make things simple… when you can make the
world a complicated place? What’s more, the fees are “promotions… for the year”,
so why would you want to let this opportunity pass you by?
The Fathala reserve (middle-left)
is not huge, but it’s very well maintained and it was a real pleasure to
discover African fauna for the first time.
The reserve is 6000 hectares in size – 2000 of which
can be visited having been opened to the public in 2003. It’s part of a larger
protected zone (73,000 hectares – 60,000 marine and 13,000 on land). It’s 5 kms
from the Gambian border and was created to preserve the environment, the fauna
and flora, and to create jobs.
Before going off to find
the “real” animals, I present to you some ostriches that were in a pen (left) and quails (bottom-middle). There was only one water point and at this end of
the dry season, the level was very low (bottom-left)!
The wooden circle is a memorial that remains protected and maintained (top-left).
The critters will be in
the next episode…
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